The power players behind Clint Eastwood's American Sniper, Birdman, Whiplash and Nightcrawler will be among those fighting for the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures at this year's (15) Producers Guild of America gala. The producers of Foxcatcher, Boyhood, Gone Girl, The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything have also been nominated for the top honour, which will be announced on 24 January (15) at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza in Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, the producers of Big Hero 6, The Book of Life, The Boxtrolls, How To Train Your Dragon 2 and The LEGO Movie will compete for the Award for Outstanding Producer of Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures, and the brains behind TV hits American Horror Story: Freak Show, Fargo, The Normal Heart, The Roosevelts: An Intimate History and Sherlock have been nominated for the David L. Wolper Award for Outstanding Producer of Long-Form Television.
The Normal Heart is already a PGA winner - the producers will collect the Stanley Kramer Award for illuminating and raising "public awareness of important social issues" at the ceremony.
Other previously announced winners include Jon Feltheimer (Milestone Award), Mark Gordon (Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television), Gale Anne Hurd (David O. Selznick Achievement Award in Theatrical Motion Pictures) and officials at Brad Pitt's production company Plan B Entertainment (Visionary Award).
Also nominated are the producers of Breaking Bad, Downton Abbey, Game Of Thrones, House Of Cards and True Detective for the Norman Felton Award for Outstanding Producer of Episodic Television, Drama, and The Big Bang Theory, Louie, Modern Family, Orange Is The New Black and Veep for the Danny Thomas Award for Outstanding Producer of Episodic Television, Comedy.

The beloved sitcom, The Office, was a hit not only because of the very funny Michael Scott (Steve Carell), but because the show had so much truth to it. Its characters weren't doing anything very exciting. They simply sold paper. But they mirrored the things everyone has to deal with in a workspace and made them funny.
1. Your desire to leave mandatory "parties" early.
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2. Taking an unscheduled break in order to get away from doing something.
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3. Watching the clock in order to leave.
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4. Having to work with people you can't stand!
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5. When a co-worker proposes to get crappy food for the party.
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6. Awkwardly getting locked out the office, or being the last one to leave and not have a key to lock up.
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7. Needing other co-workers to back you up.
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8. Having to continue to work with someone you hooked up with.
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9. When you're ready to head out and you have to try and blow off any more work that might come your way.
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10. Getting unsolicited dating advice from co-workers.
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11. Basically falling asleep during a meeting.
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12. Having a little too match at the office party
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13. Having one of those days where you just can't!
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14. When someone says something offensive in a "tolerance" meeting held by HR.
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15. When you get a not-so-highly-regarded award from work and you have to pretend you're flattered.
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Greattttttt, so can I get a raise?
16. Having to deal with your co-worker's disgusting perfume or cologne.
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17. You have been forced to resort to looking for professional help to deal with your difficult co-workers.
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18. Getting hand-me-down items from co-workers because management is cheap.
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19. Using office supplies to cut cost in your personal life.
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20. Having an unpredictable boss.
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How did The Office remind you of your own job? Tweet us your answers using the Twitter handles below!
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Rockers Kiss have helped to raise over $1 million (£625,000) for the renovation of a military museum in Oregon named after guitarist Tommy Thayer's father. Rockers Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley and Thayer were all on hand for a gala fundraiser in Lake Oswego on Sunday (14Sep14), where proceeds from ticket sales benefited the Oregon Military Museum, which is located at the state's National Guard's Camp Withycombe in Clackamas.
Thayer has been involved with the campaign to raise $15 million (£9.4 million) for renovations for the past three years, after asking the Major General in charge of the National Guard if they would consider naming the museum after his father, Brigadier General James B. Thayer.
Now 93, Thayer is a World War II veteran, who helped liberate a Nazi death camp, and the musician wanted to honour his dad, who he considers to be a "great Oregonian and a great hero personal hero of mine and my brothers".
Stanley tells local newspaper The Oregonian that he was more than happy to help his bandmate raise funds for the museum, stating, "Any time that we can do anything that celebrates the military, it's something we want to be a part of. Those are people we need to spotlight and if we can use our spotlight to shine on the people who really deserve it, then it's something we should do.
"The bonus here is that we're also shining a spotlight on General Thayer, Tommy's dad, a spectacular guy, a real hero, someone who's done great things with his time in the service. It's a double whammy. A win win. We owe it to these people who've given so much to us."
As part of the gala, an auction was held to raise funds, with items including one of Stanley's guitars, which sold for $20,000 (£12,500).
The band also played a 14-song set, and closed with an acoustic version of their hit song Rock and Roll All Night.

Splash News
Outspoken Kiss star Gene Simmons has risked incurring the wrath of African-Americans and race sympathisers by supporting disgraced basketball boss Donald Sterling's freedom of speech.
The Los Angeles Clippers owner was fined $2.5 million and threatened with expulsion from the National Basketball Association after he was caught on tape making derogatory race comments.
Simmons, who is now a sports team co-owner with arena football's L.A. Kiss, calls Sterling and his remarks "heinous", but insists people should be able to say what they think in private.
He tells the Wall Street Journal, "I'm on Mel Gibson's side, Don Sterling's side and anybody who has a racist or an expletive rant privately. The difference between this guy and anybody else is that he was caught. He was ambushed. I think he should have done penance and paid a fine."
"If because you say an off-colour joke or make a racist rant privately that causes you to lose a job, nobody would have a job. Black people do it, Jews do it, Christians do it - everybody does it. I'm on the side of free speech in the privacy of your own home. Big brother has finally crawled in bed with us."
Following his race row earlier this year (14), NBA Commissioner Adam Silver told Sterling he would have to sell the Clippers. That is still ongoing.

Space drama Gravity scooped a handful of top honours at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Awards on Sunday (16Feb14), including a Best Director prize for Alfonso Cuaron. The sci-fi hit, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as astronauts stranded in outer space, also picked up awards for Best British Film, Best Cinematography, Best Music, and Best Visual Effects.
It was a disappointing night for Oscars favourite 12 Years A Slave - although the drama took home Best Film and Best Actor for Chiwetel Ejiofor, it lost out in a string of other top categories, including Best Supporting Actor (Michael Fassbender) and Best Adapted Screenplay, which was instead awarded to Philomena writers Steve Coogan and Jeff Pope.
There was also no trophy for Ejiofor's co-star, newcomer Lupita Nyong'o, who missed out on a Best Supporting Actress honour to Jennifer Lawrence; she was also denied the Rising Star Award, which went to We're The Millers actor Will Poulter.
Cate Blanchett was named Best Actress for her role in Woody Allen comedy Blue Jasmine, and Captain Phillips star Barkhad Abdi took home the Best Supporting Actor prize, while Dame Helen Mirren was honoured with a BAFTA Fellowship for Lifetime Achievement.
Collecting his Best Director award, Mexican moviemaker Cuaron said, "You can't tell from my accent but I consider myself a part of the British film industry. I've lived in London for the last 30 years and I've done almost half of my films in the U.K. I guess I make a good case for curbing immigration!"
The award ceremony's emotional highlight came as Blanchett dedicated her Best Actress trophy to her late friend Philip Seymour Hoffman, who died earlier this month (Feb14).
She said, "Phil, your monumental talent, your generosity, and your unflinching quest for the truth, both in art and life, will be missed, not only by me but by so many... Phil, buddy - this is for you, you b**tard! I hope you're proud."
The ceremony at the Royal Opera House was presented by Stephen Fry and featured guests including Leonardo DiCaprio, who presented the supporting actress award, Brad Pitt, Uma Thurman, Prince William, Amy Adams, Emma Thompson, and Stanley Tucci.
The list of 2014 BAFTA film award winners is:
- Best Film: 12 Years A Slave
- Best British Film: Gravity
- Best Director: Alfonso Cuaron (Gravity)
- Leading Actor: Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years A Slave)
- Leading Actress: Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)
- Supporting Actor: Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips)
- Supporting Actress: Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle)
- Best Original Screenplay: Eric Warren Singer, David O. Russell (American Hustle)
- Best Music: Steven Price (Gravity)
- Best Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki (Gravity)
- Best Editing: Dan Hanley & Mike Hill (Rush)
- Best Visual Effects: Tim Webber, Chris Lawrence, David Shirk, Neil Corbould & Nikki Penny (Gravity)
- Best Sound: Glenn Freemantle, Skip Lievsay, Christopher Benstead, Niv Adiri & Chris Munro (Gravity)
- Best Production Design: Catherine Martin & Beverley Dunn (The Great Gatsby)
- Best Costume Design: Catherine Martin (The Great Gatsby)
- Best Makeup & Hair: Evelyne Noraz & Lori McCoy-Bell (American Hustle)
- Rising Star: Will Poulter
- Best Adapted Screenplay: Steve Coogan & Jeff Pope (Philomena)
- Outstanding Debut: Kieran Evans (Kelly and Victor)
- Best Foreign Film: The Act of Killing
- Best Film Not in the English language: The Great Beauty
- Best Short Animation: Sleeping With the Fishes
- Best Short Film: Room 8
- Best Animated Film: Frozen
- Outstanding Contribution to British Cinema: Peter Greenaway
- BAFTA Fellowship for Lifetime Achievement: Dame Helen Mirren

Forest Whitaker and first-time director Ryan Coogler are to be honoured with one of Hollywood's most coveted trophies when they collect the Producers Guild of America's Stanley Kramer Award for acclaimed 2013 film Fruitvale Station. The filmmakers and their movie will be feted at the 25th annual prizegiving on 19 January (14) at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles.
The award was established in 2002 to honour a production, producer or other individual whose achievement or contribution illuminates and raises public awareness of important social issues.
Announcing the news of Fruitvale Station's honour on Friday (13Dec13), PGA Awards co-chairs Lori McCreary and Michael De Luca state, "Fruitvale Station is an important film that raises awareness about an injustice that we encounter in the news with grim regularity. First time writer/director Ryan Coogler has captured the hearts and minds of both audiences and critics with his poignant portrayal of the true story of Oscar Grant."
The film chronicles follows the true story of Oscar Grant, portrayed by Michael B. Jordan, a 22 year old who wakes up on the morning of 31 December, 2008 and feels something in the air. Not sure what it is, he takes it as a sign to get a head start on his resolutions to be a better son to his mother and a better partner to his girlfriend. His resolve takes a tragic turn when he finds himself in the middle of a New Year's Day dispute with police officers in Oakland, California. In the scuffle, Grant is shot and later dies.
Whitaker, one of the films producers, says, "We are very excited that Fruitvale Station is being honoured with the Stanley Kramer Award. It is a testament to the director, the production team and the incredible efforts of the many talented people in our crew and cast who worked so hard because they believed in the message of this movie."

Lions Gate via Everett Collection
When we last left our heroes, they had conquered all opponents in the 74th Annual Hunger Games, returned home to their newly refurbished living quarters in District 12, and fallen haplessly to the cannibalism of PTSD. And now we're back! Hitching our wagons once again to laconic Katniss Everdeen and her sweet-natured, just-for-the-camera boyfriend Peeta Mellark as they gear up for a second go at the Capitol's killing fields.
But hold your horses — there's a good hour and a half before we step back into the arena. However, the time spent with Katniss and Peeta before the announcement that they'll be competing again for the ceremonial Quarter Quell does not drag. In fact, it's got some of the film franchise's most interesting commentary about celebrity, reality television, and the media so far, well outweighing the merit of The Hunger Games' satire on the subject matter by having Katniss struggle with her responsibilities as Panem's idol. Does she abide by the command of status quo, delighting in the public's applause for her and keeping them complacently saturated with her smiles and curtsies? Or does Katniss hold three fingers high in opposition to the machine into which she has been thrown? It's a quarrel that the real Jennifer Lawrence would handle with a castigation of the media and a joke about sandwiches, or something... but her stakes are, admittedly, much lower. Harvey Weinstein isn't threatening to kill her secret boyfriend.
Through this chapter, Katniss also grapples with a more personal warfare: her devotion to Gale (despite her inability to commit to the idea of love) and her family, her complicated, moralistic affection for Peeta, her remorse over losing Rue, and her agonizing desire to flee the eye of the public and the Capitol. Oftentimes, Katniss' depression and guilty conscience transcends the bounds of sappy. Her soap opera scenes with a soot-covered Gale really push the limits, saved if only by the undeniable grace and charisma of star Lawrence at every step along the way of this film. So it's sappy, but never too sappy.
In fact, Catching Fire is a masterpiece of pushing limits as far as they'll extend before the point of diminishing returns. Director Francis Lawrence maintains an ambiance that lends to emotional investment but never imposes too much realism as to drip into territories of grit. All of Catching Fire lives in a dreamlike state, a stark contrast to Hunger Games' guttural, grimacing quality that robbed it of the life force Suzanne Collins pumped into her first novel.
Once we get to the thunderdome, our engines are effectively revved for the "fun part." Katniss, Peeta, and their array of allies and enemies traverse a nightmare course that seems perfectly suited for a videogame spin-off. At this point, we've spent just enough time with the secondary characters to grow a bit fond of them — deliberately obnoxious Finnick, jarringly provocative Johanna, offbeat geeks Beedee and Wiress — but not quite enough to dissolve the mystery surrounding any of them or their true intentions (which become more and more enigmatic as the film progresses). We only need adhere to Katniss and Peeta once tossed in the pit of doom that is the 75th Hunger Games arena, but finding real characters in the other tributes makes for a far more fun round of extreme manhunt.
But Catching Fire doesn't vie for anything particularly grand. It entertains and engages, having fun with and anchoring weight to its characters and circumstances, but stays within the expected confines of what a Hunger Games movie can be. It's a good one, but without shooting for succinctly interesting or surprising work with Katniss and her relationships or taking a stab at anything but the obvious in terms of sending up the militant tyrannical autocracy, it never even closes in on the possibility of being a great one.
3.5/5
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Chris Nashawaty
Who's the one person who connects such different Hollywood artists as Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, James Cameron, Ron Howard, and Jack Nicholson? The man, the legend, Roger Corman. In his new book Crab Monsters, Teenage Cavemen, and Candy Stripe Nurses, Chris Nashawaty presents on oral history of Corman's career told by the B-movie maestro himself and also by the many marquee names who got their start in the business working on his fast-pace, low-budget productions. But it's also something more. It includes in-depth aesthetic appreciations of ten of Corman's movies, which, taken together, make a compelling case for Corman as an artist. Nashawaty's book, available now from Amazon and Barnes &amp; Noble, started as an article in 2009 for Entertainment Weekly, where he's a film critic. (Full Disclosure: Nashawaty was a colleague of mine when I worked at EW.) That article was pegged to Corman receiving a lifetime achievement Academy Award. "I'd interviewed him various times over the years, and he's always been a good interview," Nashawaty says. "He knows how to tell a story, and he's always got a quote handy. But with this book project I got to sit down with him in person and spend some real time with him and ask him about the whole course of his career." Nashawaty tells us how Corman helped create modern Hollywood.
Hollywood.com: How did you first discover Roger Corman and become a fan? Chris Nashawaty: Well, look, when you tell people that you’re a film critic they expect for you to say you grew up on classy movies and Oscar-winning movies, and the fact is I grew up watching monster movies and Piranha and all sorts of other movies that your parents don’t want you to watch. Roger Corman was a name I just kept recognizing in the credits and it wasn’t until I started working at Entertainment Weekly that I started to dig a little deeper and realized that there are 400 of these movies that he’s attached to. When you discover a great director like Stanley Kubrick and you say “I’m going to watch every Stanley Kubrick movie!” that’s only going to take you 10 movies and then you’re done, but Corman is the gift that keeps on giving.
HW: You really dive in deep to give an aesthetic appreciation of his movies, which is unique because often the artistic value of his movies is ignored. He’s thought of more as a mogul or a producer. Do you think he’s generally neglected as an artist? CN:He’s very much overlooked as a director. I think people focus too much on his drive-in movies or exploitation movies — or only focus on the people he mentored — and don’t think about him as a film stylist. And he made some really good movies. Sure, he started off making some disposable, quickie, cheap drive-in movies about atomic monsters, and those are fine. Some of them are even very good. But it wasn’t until the ‘60s that he began to find his voice and develop a style, particularly in his Edgar Allen Poe adaptations. He directed most of them beginning with House of Usher in 1960 and they’re very atmospheric, much like the films Hammer was making in England at the time. They’re Gothic horror movies, they’re moody and colorful, in large part because he assembled an incredible crew. Nicolas Roeg is the DP on The Tomb of Ligeia. So to break up the oral history of his life with all the racy stories, I picked two of his movies per decade and wrote an essay about each. They’re movies that speak to me personally, like Masque of the Red Death, Attack of the Crab Monsters, and Boxcar Bertha.
He also made this movie in 1962 called The Intruder starring William Shatner that was way ahead of its time. It was about segregation in the South. It was a very personal film for Corman and really well made too. Shatner plays a rabble-rousing racist who goes to a Southern town and whips the locals into a frenzy about integration in the schools. It’s a very progressive film about a hot topic that the Hollywood studios wouldn’t even have touched until another five years with In the Heat of the Night and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and even then not very forcefully. But this is a movie that’s very explosive. Ironically, it’s his most personal film and the only one he lost money on in his career.
HW: Do you have a particular favorite of his movies? CN: It's probably a tie. There's Masque of the Red Death, which is my favorite of his Poe movies. It’s just so twisted and gorgeous, it’s like a Bergman film made into an exploitation horror movie. It’s great. And the other one is probably the first Corman movie I ever saw, which is Piranha. I remember seeing that in the theater when I was really young, I don’t know how or why my parents thought it was a good idea to take me to see a movie called Piranha. But they did, God bless them, and that movie has just always stuck with me. It was Joe Dante’s first movie, and it had a script by John Sayles. It’s a great Jaws ripoff about killer fish turning people into mincemeat.
HW: That seems to be a very sore point for him, that he lost money on The Intruder in particular. CN: Yeah, he mortgaged his house to make that movie. It was that personal to him. And the fact that it wasn’t a success really stung him, deeply. If it had been a success, it’s interesting to think what kind of films he might have made afterward. But it taught him a lesson that maybe this whole personal filmmaking thing wasn’t necessarily something that was going to work for him. Which isn’t to say that his subsequent movies aren’t personal — they are — but he never tried to say something in the same way that he did in that movie again.
HW: You make the argument that he was always ahead of the curve — certainly on race relations as in The Intruder — but also when it came to recognizing the burgeoning youth market. CN: You know the teenager is a very ‘50s concept. The whole idea of young kids being able to spend money and go to the drive-ins, that was something that didn’t exist until the ‘50s and I don’t think Hollywood really recognized them as a real lucrative market. But Corman did. Some of the safer movies that were being aimed at teens at the time, the Beach Party/Beach Blanket Bingo movies, they were fun and campy but they weren’t movies that teenagers necessarily wanted to see…they weren’t about rebellion really. But Corman recognized there was a whole demographic that was being ignored. He saw that, pounced on it, and made biker movies like The Wild Angels and just movies that were showing what was going on in society before anyone else was.
HW: Now, fifty years later, so much of Hollywood filmmaking as a whole is geared toward teenagers. People often credit Jaws and Star Wars for creating youth-oriented blockbuster culture, but do you think Corman deserves his share of recognition for helping create modern Hollywood? CN: I do, yeah, in a lot of ways. And not just that one. There are several different moments where he recognized what was going on faster than the slower-on-the-uptake studios did. One of them was noticing there was an underserved teen market for movies. Another was much later in the ‘80s, when the country was being overrun by videostores, the VHS market was not one the studios exploited right away. It was Corman, who’d been sort of squeezed out of making movies who rejuvenated his business by recognizing there was this VHS market. He made these straight-to-video movies because he knew mom-and-pop video shops were hungry for product. So he’d make straight-to-video movies and put the most lurid, garish, sexy cover he could put on them, with the movie being almost an afterthought, and they’d sell like hotcakes.
Chris Nashawaty
HW: Looking at all the great Corman posters from the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s featured in your book, it hits home how much the art of movie posters seems to have been lost. CN: I agree. He didn’t have budgets and he didn’t have stars so all he really had to sell a movie was a great poster. In a way it was the purest form of advertising you can imagine: you make a great poster and you slap an incredible tagline on it. My favorite is for Angels Hard As They Come, from 1971, and it’s a biker movie starring Scott Glenn and Gary Busey. The tagline is “Big men with throbbing machines and the girls who take them on.” I mean, that’s a great come on. It’s total Barnum &amp; Bailey “Sell! Sell! Sell!” He was just a master at making posters and trailers that were in a way better than the movies themselves.
HW: Sometimes the alumni of Corman University speak about him with some snark, but generally there seems to be real affection there. Why do you think that is? CN: Once these people went on to have legitimate careers they looked back on their films for Corman as their salad days. It was a great time — they were young, they weren’t getting paid a lot of money, but they got to make a movie. I think we forget how hard, and how rare, that is. You had to work your way up the ladder and studios were closed shops to a lot of people. Corman took the best and brightest out of the film schools and said, “Hey, I’m going to exploit you, I’m going to pay you nothing, I’m going to work you to the bone, but I’m going to give you the shot to make a movie.” And I think a lot of those people who went on to work for big studios realized that they didn’t know how good they had it when they were making movies for Roger Corman because he didn’t give them endless notes or micromanage what they were doing.
HW: You also argue that Corman is the single greatest connecting thread between Old Hollywood and New Hollywood. CN: I can’t think of anyone else who has had the same sort of longevity and is as much of a throughline of the past 60 years of Hollywood. Corman may not be a household name, but he is probably the least known, most influential figure in the last half century of Hollywood. And he’s still making movies today for Syfy. Nobody else has had the reach or impact that he’s had. Just look at the famous people who got their starts in his films, everyone from Jack Nicholson to Scorsese to James Cameron to Coppola, if you take all of those people out of the history of Hollywood, if Corman had not given them their break, the movie industry as we know it today would not exist.
Chris Nashawaty
HW: And he created an independent model of film production that anticipated the independent film revolution by decades. CN: Corman was really the only one I can think of, maybe more recently Miramax, who gave the major studios a run for their money. Because there had been poverty row independent studios since the start of Hollywood, but they could come and go. Between the first company he worked for, American International Pictures, and then his own company New World Pictures, he streamlined and refined what independent filmmaking could be. And I don’t think he gets enough credit for that.
HW: Do you think it would be possible for there to be a Roger Corman today? CN: I don’t think it’s possible for there to be a Roger Corman today because, in a way, anybody can make a movie now. And a lot of people who shouldn’t be making movies are now, because it’s so easy. You can make a movie with your iPhone. But Corman is a singular example of someone who had the genius to make movies that looked like real movies and have them make money. I don’t think you can make the quantity and the quality of movies that he made today.
HW: Do you think Corman will like your book? CN: I think so, because all of the people I interviewed offer up their love letters to him in a way, even though he comes in for some gentle ribbing about how cheap he was. I think he’s treated fairly, though, and his career is celebrated. My favorite quote in the whole book is in the introduction, and it’s from Ron Howard when he was making his first movie as a director, for Corman, called Grand Theft Auto. Corman was very tight on the budget with him, and Ron Howard needed some more extras for which Corman wouldn’t pony up any more money. So Ron Howard was despondent, but Corman walked up to him and said, “Ron, know this. If you do a good job for me on this picture, you’ll never have to work for me again.” Sure, Howard’s recollection of that pokes fun at him a bit, but the underlying message was “I’m giving you a shot and if you do a good job you’ll be able to graduate beyond me.” It was up to you to make something of yourself, to show what you’ve got.
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Oprah Winfrey is a marketing machine and the evidence is clear as the true life biopic Lee Daniels' The Butler tops the chart this weekend with an impressive $25.01 million. The film is already generating Oscar buzz with Forest Whitaker's portrayal of a butler who served under numerous U.S. Presidents for 34 years garnering much praise from audiences and critics alike. This is the first number one opening weekend for The Weinstein Co. since 2009's Inglourious Basterds and proves that when Oprah endorses anything, whether a book or a movie, audiences listen.In second place with $17.78 million is Warner Bros.' R-rated comedy We're the Millers which impressively of all the wide release films for this Summer, had the best second weekend at hold at just 33%. The film is just shy of the $70 million mark in North America.Third place goes to Sony's R-rated sci-fi thriller Elysium which in its second weekend blasted up another $13.6 million against a 54% drop after a first place debut last weekend and $55.9 million to date in North America. The Matt Damon film directed by District 9's Neil Blomkamp earned an estimated $22 million overseas this weekend, bringing its cume to $37.7 million internationally and $93.6 million worldwide.Universal's Kick Ass 2 came in much lower than expected for a fourth place debut of $13.568 million, the original Kick Ass opened in April of 2010 with a number one debut of $19.8 million and many were expecting a number in that range for the R-rated action sequel this weekend. Internationally the film fared better opening in 17 territories this weekend and grossed an estimated $6.3M at 1,500 dates.The Top 5 is rounded out by Disney's animated Planes in its second weekend with $13.14 million and $45.09 million to date while Open Road's Steve Jobs biopic Jobs starring Ashton Kutcher in the titular role also opened to a less than expected $6.7 million in seventh place as did the Harrison Ford film Paranoia from Relativity Media in the number 13 spot with $3.5 million.Only two more weekends left in the summer movie season and we are running nearly 11% ahead of the season at the same point last year.Top Movies for Weekend of August 16 - August 18 (Estimates)Rank Movie Gross Theaters Avg.Per YTD Distributor01 Lee Daniel's The Butler $25.01M 2,933 $8,527 $25.01M TWC02 We're the Millers $17.78M 3,325 $5,347 $69.5M Warner Bros.03 Elysium $13.6M 3,284 $4,141 $55.9M Sony/Tri-Star04 Kick-Ass 2 $13.568M 2,940 $4,615 $13.568M Universal05 Planes $13.14M 3,716 $3,536 $45.09M Disney06 Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters $8.375M 3,080 $2,719 $38.9M Fox07 Jobs $6.7M 2,381 $2,814 $6.7M Open Road08 2 Guns $5.572M 2,471 $2,255 $59.2M Universal09 The Smurfs 2 $4.6M 2,349 $1,958 $56.9M Sony10 The Wolverine $4.425M 2,058 $2,150 $120.45M Fox

Iconic jazz musician and producer George Duke has died at the age of 67. He passed away on Monday night (05Aug13) at St. John's Hospital in Los Angeles, where he had been receiving treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, his publicist has revealed.
Duke's son, Rashid, has thanked fans for their support following the news of his dad's death in a statement which reads: "The outpouring of love and support that we have received from my father's friends, fans and the entire music community has been overwhelming. Thank you all for your concern, prayers and support."
Duke, who learned to play the piano at the tender age of four, began working in the industry as a session musician in the late 1960s, working with violinist Jean-Luc Ponty and performing with the Don Ellis Orchestra. It was during that time that he met eccentric trailblazer Frank Zappa, who recruited Duke to appear on a number of his albums in the 1970s, including Chunga's Revenge, 200 Motels and The Grand Wazoo.
Famed for his ability to fuse jazz, soul, R&B and funk, he became known for playing with jazz bassist Stanley Clarke and drummer Billy Cobham and joined Cannonball Adderley's band, with which he experienced chart success with their song Sweet Baby.
He stepped out on his own in 1976 and went on to release more than 30 solo albums throughout a career spanning more than four decades. His last release, DreamWeaver, was released in July (13) and featured a touching tribute to his late wife, Corine, who died from cancer last year (12).
As a producer, Duke worked with legendary stars including Miles Davis, Smokey Robinson, Gladys Knight and Dionne Warwick, while he contributed to movie soundtracks for The Five Heartbeats and Karate Kid III.
He also famously played keyboard on Michael Jackson's classic 1979 album, Off the Wall.
Duke's compositions have continued to inspire modern musicians and he has been sampled by the likes of Daft Punk, Kanye West and Ice Cube.